Computer-based and/or electronic gaming systems are known that provide a shared virtual environment for many players to interact in a virtual world. With increased availability and connectivity to the Internet, many players from all over the world can interact in the virtual environment and perform various game objectives. Such gaming systems typically do not have a virtual world geography that parallels the real world. Location-based games use the real world as their geography. Some location-based games add virtual locations on a map that parallels the real world geography. Such games, however, are typically focused on real world objectives. These games typically do not include a virtual world that parallels the real world and that acts as a virtual game environment in which many players can interact and perform various game objectives in the parallel virtual world by navigating and performing actions in the real world.
A location-based game having a virtual world that parallels the real world can rely on location specific information, such as the locations of landmarks, monuments, or other points of interest in the real world. For instance, virtual elements in the virtual world can be linked or associated with real world landmarks or objects in the actual world. The virtual elements linked with the real world landmarks can depend on information associated with the real world landmarks, such as the location of the landmark, the relevance of the landmark, the accessibility of the landmark and/or other information associated with the landmark.
The collection of a database of such information can be a tedious process and may require user input from a plurality of users. As a result, the database content can be relatively noisy. The size of the database can often prohibit manual editing of the database content by system administrators. Some noise can be removed by applying filters based on description fields associated with database content or by using pattern matching to associate noise with existing database content. These techniques, however, may not be suitable for a location based game having a virtual world paralleling the real world having game objectives involving virtual game elements or objects associated with or linked to the location of real world objects.